(Note:
this blogpost has been revised on Oct. 8, 2017.) Do you want your vote to count?

You have two votes

You have two votes: one for your
local MLA, and for a regional MLA from your local region. You cast your second vote for a party’s regional candidate you prefer, which counts as
a vote for that party. This is the same practical model used in Scotland, withone
vital improvement: Canadian voters would like to vote for a specific
regional candidate and hold them accountable.

I’m assuming 52 local MLAs and 35
regional MLAs, so 60% of MLAs are elected in local districts as we do today.
The other 35 are elected from seven regions.

The regions have an average of 12 MLAs each: seven local, five regional.Every voter for any of the three parties in all seven regions has an MLA they helped elect, either from their local district or from their local region.

The best of both worlds

Would proportional representation hurt small communities? Just the opposite: voters
are guaranteed two things which equal better local representation:

1.
A local MLA who will champion their
area.

2.
An MLA whose views best reflect their values, someone they helped elect in
their local district or local region.

No
longer does one person claim to speak for everyone in the district. No longer
does one party claim unbridled power with only 40% support. Local districts are
bigger than today, but in return you have competing MLAs: a local MLA, and
about five regional MLAs from your local region.

Parties will work together

Parties
will, unless one party had outright majority support, have to work together -
to earn our trust where others have broken it, and to show that a new kind of
governance is possible. Research clearly shows that proportionately-elected
governments and cooperative decision-making produce better policy outcomes and
sustainable progress on major issues over the long term.

BC’s rural/urban divide

One factor I have left alone is the all-party consensus to protect the 17 electoral districts in the
North Region, the Cariboo-Thompson Region, and the Columbia-Kootenay Region,
largely rural and small-urban. These elected13 Liberals and four New Democrats in 2017. Any likely proportional system for BC
will keep the same regional balance. Thus, it is not surprising that my simulation
gives the Liberals a bonus of one MLA, at the
cost of the NDP. Province-wide result: 37 Liberals, 35 NDP, 15 GreensThe perfectly proportional result would have been 36
Liberal MLAs, 36 NDP MLAs, and 15 Greens. Instead, for the reason above, I get 37, 35 and 15. This
does not change the election outcome, since the parties will form the coalitions
they choose to form, regardless which party has a few more seats than the other.

Regional nominations

Typically, party members will
nominate local candidates first, then hold a regional nomination process. Often
the regional candidates will include the local candidates, plus a few
regional-only candidates who will add diversity and balance to the regional
slate. In order to ensure democratic nominations, it would be useful to deny
taxpayer subsidy to any party not nominating democratically. The meeting would decide what rank order each
would have on the regional ballot. But then voters in the region would have the
final choice.

A simulation

What follows is only a simulation
from the votes cast in 2017.In any
election, as Prof. Dennis
Pilon says: "Now keep in
mind that, when you change the voting system, you also change the incentives
that affect the kinds of decisions that voters might make. For instance, we
know that, when every vote counts, voters won't have to worry about splitting
the vote, or casting a strategic vote. Thus, we should expect that support for
different parties might change."

The North and the Cariboo Region

Instead of electing eight Liberal
MLAs and only two New Democrats, these voters would have elected another New
Democrat. That
would be the candidate who got the most votes across the region (after crossing
off the regional list those who were elected as Local MLAs). Maybe Anne Marie
Sam (an elected councilor with the Nak’azdli Nation) or Quesnel
city councilor Scott Elliott or Prince George labour lawyer Bobby Deepak.
And they would have elected a Green MLA, maybe Rita Giesbrecht from 100 Mile
House (Party Spokesperson for Rural development) or Nan Kendy from Prince
George.

The Interior including the Columbia—Kootenay Region and Kamloops

Instead of electing 12 Liberal MLAs and two New Democrats, these voters
would have elected two more New Democrats as well as Michelle Mungall and
Katrine Conroy. Maybe Harry Lali from Merritt and Barb Nederpel from Kamloops
or Barry Dorval from Vernon or Colleen Ross from Grand Forks or Gerry Taft from
Invermere. And Green voters would have elected three MLAs such as
former Nelson city councillor Kim Charlesworth (Party Spokesperson
for Agriculture and food systems), Dan Hines from Kamloops (Green Party
Spokesperson for Forestry), and Keli Westgate from Vernon.

Fraser Valley-Langley Region

Instead
of electing Liberal MLAs in all seven districts, these voters would have
elected two NDP MLAs such as Langley Teachers Association leader Gail
Chaddock-Costello and Chiliwack shelter director Patti MacAhonic, and a Green
MLA like Langley’s Bill Masse (Green Party Research and Policy Chair) or
Elizabeth Walker.

Vancouver—North Shore Region

Instead
of electing only ten NDP MLAs and six Liberal MLAs, these voters would have
elected three Green Party MLAs. Maybe Dana Taylor (he was a North Vancouver city
councilor), Kim Darwin from the Sunshine Coast (she was President of the
Sechelt Chamber of Commerce) and David Wong (architect and author
of ‘Escape to Gold Mountain’) or Prof. Michael Markwick (Party Spokesperson for
Democratic Security and Human Rights) or Jerry Kroll (Party Spokesperson on Transportation).

Burnaby—Tri-Cities—Maple Ridge
Region

Instead
of electing ten NDP MLAs and only one Liberal, these voters would have elected
a Green MLA (likely Jonina Campbell, New Westminster School Board chair and
Party Spokesperson for Education), as well as two Liberal incumbents
like Linda Reimer and Richard Lee.

Surrey-Delta-Richmond Region

Instead of electing only eight
Liberals and seven New Democrats, these voters would also have elected two
Green MLAs, such as Roy Sakata (retired school administrator
of Richmond School District) and Surrey’s Rita Fromholt or Delta’s Jacquie
Miller or White Rock’s Bill Marshall.

Vancouver Island

These voters would have elected
another Green MLA like Lia Versaevel from North Cowichan, Victoria’s Kalen
Harris, or Mark Neufeld (party spokesperson on Youth and
intergenerational equity), and
three more Liberal MLAs likeJim
Benningerfrom Comox, indigenous
leader Dallas Smith from North Island, and Nanaimo’s Paris Gaudet.

How will regional MPs
operate?

Most
regional MPs will each cover several ridings. This is just the way it’s done in Scotland, where each regional MP
normally covers about three local ridings, and holds office hours rotating
across them.

Overhangs

With
a regional MMP model, we risk local sweeps being so extreme that they create
“overhangs.” Those are results too disproportional for the regional compensatory
(“top-up”) MLAs to correct, when they are only 40% of the total. That’s the
trade-off in the system design, to keep local ridings from being almost double
their present size. In this simulation we find one overhang. The NDP near-sweep in Burnaby-Tri-Cities-Maple Ridge gives them an extra
MLA there, offsetting the NDP’s rural shortfall.

Technical note

The
calculation for any PR system has to choose a rounding method, to round
fractions up and down. I have used the “largest remainder” calculation, which
Germany used until recently, because it is the simplest and most transparent.
In a 10-MLA region, if Party A deserves 3.2 MLAs, Party B deserves 3.1, Party C
deserves 2.3, and Party D deserves 1.4, which party gets the tenth seat? Party
D has a remainder of 0.4, the largest remainder. In a region where one party
wins a bonus (“overhang”), I allocate the remaining seats among the remaining
parties by the same calculation.

To
keep voting simple, with no party lists, you can use the “best runner-up”
model.

You
cast only one vote, for your local MLA, which also counts as a vote for
that candidate’s party (if he or she has one). You have a local MLA, and regional
MLAs in top-up seats, just like the normal MMP model. But the candidates elected
to those regional seats are the local candidates who, while not elected
locally, got the highest vote percent of that party’s candidates in that
region.

The
party outcome is identical to the normal MMP model, but the regional MLAs are simply
the best runners-up in the region of the party whose voters are
under-represented in that region. The simple ballot is just like today’s
ballot.

Who
invented this model? No one, it is in actual use in the German province
of Baden-Wurttemberg. They’ve used it since 1952.

They
call it the Personalized No-List Proportional
System.

It’s
a very local model: the best runners-up are ranked only by how well
their local voters liked them.

True,
with no regional nomination process, a party’s members have no opportunity to nominate
additional regional candidates from minority groups, or women. Voters across
the region have no second vote, no opportunity to vote region-wide for the
regional candidate they prefer. And voters are not free to vote for a local
candidate of a different party than they want in government.

Still,
every MLA has faced the local voters, with one tiny exception: you still
need a regional nomination process to nominate a few alternate candidates.
Suppose voters for a party cast 67% of the votes in a 12-MLA region, and elect MLAs
in all seven local seats. They are entitled to elect an eighth MLA, a regional
MLA to top-up the regional results, but the party has no best-runners up in the
region. So it will have to be the top candidate on the party’s regional list.
Yes, ranked by the party’s nomination process, not by the voters, but this will
happen very rarely, if ever.

The
government, after the public consultations, may decide to put more than one PR
model on the ballot. This one would be a simple and practical alternative.

Eight region model:

Some
people feel the North Shore has a unique character, despite having only five
MLAs (including Powell River-Sunshine Coast), and should be its own region. This has the advantage of letting Richmond be
paired with Vancouver rather than with Surrey, a better match. So here’s that
alternative. (Sadly, it elects one less Green: 38 Liberals, 36 NDP, and 14 Greens):

Vancouver—Richmond Region

Instead
of electing only eight NDP MLAs and seven Liberal MLAs, these voters would also
have elected two Green Party MLAs. Maybe David Wong (architect and author of
‘Escape to Gold Mountain’) and elected school trustee Janet Fraser, or Jerry
Kroll (Party Spokesperson on Transportation) or Bradley Shende (Party
Spokesperson for income security).

Surrey-Delta Region

Instead of electing only four
Liberals and seven New Democrats, these voters would also have elected a Green
MLA, such as White Rock’s Bill Marshall or Surrey’s Aleksandra Muniak, or
Delta’s Jacquie Miller or Surrey’s Rita Fromholt.

North Shore Region

Instead
of electing only two NDP MLAs and three Liberal MLAs, these voters would also have
elected a Green Party MLA. Maybe Dana Taylor (he was a North Vancouver city
councilor), or Kim Darwin from the Sunshine Coast (she was President of the
Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce), or Prof. Michael Markwick (Party
Spokesperson for Democratic Security and Human Rights)

Fast Boundaries version:

Suppose
the new government wanted to implement MMP without an entire Boundaries Hearing
process for the new electoral districts? They could use the existing 42 federal
electoral districts. The government would only have to choose the regions. Then, each region would also have enough
regional MLAs that the present numbers of MLAs from each district would be
unchanged. BC
would still have 87 MLAs: 42 local, 45 regional.

The North and the Cariboo
Region

It would have only three local MLAs, but would have seven regional MLAs. The
result would be the same as outlined above: six Liberals, three New Democrats
and a Green. The local result in Skeena—Bulkley Valley would have been very
close, but even if the Liberals won all three local seats, the NDP would have three
regional MLAs, the Greens one, and the Liberals three. Again, the regional MLAs
would be those candidates who got the most votes across the region (after
crossing off the regional list those who were elected as Local MLAs).

The Interior
including the Columbia—Kootenay Region and Kamloops

Because
the federal electoral district of Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon runs up to
Lillooet and Cache Creek, it includes 33.1% of the population of Fraser-Nicola,
and Chilliwack—Hope includes another 20.1%. Therefore, I have to count
Fraser-Nicola as part of the Fraser Valley-Langley Region, so this Interior
region has only 13 MLAs today. They will now have six local MLAs and seven
regional MLAs: five local Liberals and one local NDP, plus three regional NDP
MLAs, two regional Liberal MLAs, and two regional Green MLAs.

Fraser Valley-Langley Region

Adding
Fraser-Nicola, this region now has nine MLAs, and will continue to: four local
MLAs (all Liberals) and five regional: three NDP, one Green and one more
Liberal.

Province-wide

The province-wide
result is 38 Liberals, 35 NDP, and 14 Green. Again, this does not change the election
outcome, since the parties will form the coalitions they choose to form,
regardless which party has a few more seats than the other.

About Me

Although I am a member of Fair Vote Canada's Council at the federal level, the views expressed on this blog are my own.
I have been a lawyer since 1971, an elected school trustee from 1982 to 1994, past chair of the Board of the Northumberland Community Legal Centre, and so on.